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A Portside Message: The Challenge of Wannabe Fascism

How can we prevent a wannabe dictator from consolidating absolute power? Please help us to inform, analyze and mobilize in the year ahead. Here's how you can help.

As a reader of Portside, you know that we aim to address the biggest and hardest questions of the day head-on. The question before us now is: How can we prevent a wannabe fascist from consolidating absolute power? Even before taking office, Trump is seeking to neuter Congress, install a Cabinet of Horrors and create a government subservient to him alone.

But a wannabe dictator is not yet a dictator. We believe that strengthening the Left, with its vision of a multiracial democratic and working-class movement, is key to defeating the fascist danger.

This is a time for searching analysis, open debate, and strategizing. No one has a monopoly on truth or wisdom. We at Portside will be working to provide you and other readers the best strategic thinking and analysis we can find from a multitude of sources. We will continue to reflect the struggles, in our country and globally, for peace, security and justice. Once a year we ask you to help us do that.

        Support This Vision

We believe that people make their own history, including in the face of the most difficult circumstances. We search the Internet every day for examples of people making history, including frontline reporting, incisive argument, culture and humor. We look for and share insights from science. Every day, we share the best that we find with you.

As you probably know, we moderators of Portside work on an entirely volunteer basis. We’re rewarded by the readers who put the information we provide to use to secure a better future, a just social order.

We pledge to keep doing what we've been doing. We ask you to help us by donating to keep our servers running and our website current.

We hope you keep up with our posts every day, with news, politics, culture, labor and other material of interest to people on the left.

In the last year we were able to report on how handmaids and their friends defeated theocrats in state after state. How creative and determined strikes, from autoworkers to actors, won landmark victories. Each victory reinforces the belief that others are possible.

We are delighted that the Portside family has been reinforced by thousands of new readers. More people are recommending material and more authors are submitting their writings for consideration. We are dedicated to serving as your eyes and ears in the digital universe. Keep sending your input to either portside@portside.org or reader comments.

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Please contribute to keep this project going. We promise to make every donation go a long way toward the future we seek together. We don’t ask our readers for financial support often. If you want to be a part of this project and to keep it going strong, this is the time to support Portside.

Yours in struggle,

The entire Portside crew

Judy Atkins, Jonathan Bennett, Mark Brody, Barry Cohen, David Cohen, Ira Cohen, Jeannette Ferrary, Marti Garza, Greg Heires, Geoffrey Jacques, Will Jones, Maureen LaMar, Stephanie Luce, Ray Markey, John P. Pittman, Natalie Reuss, Lee Rossi, Nan Rubin, Meredith Schafer, Jay Schaffner, Kurt Stand, Ethan Young

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